BOSTON (AP) – Jill Carroll’s chief captor said he would release the American reporter the next day. Her captors said they would pay her for her computer and bring her a gift. The women gave her new clothes.

But the next morning, seated in the back of a car, another of her main captors told the 28-year-old freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor that the Americans had not complied with any of the group’s demands since she was kidnapped in Baghdad almost three months before.

“Now,” Abu Rasha said, “we’re going to kill you.”

In the tenth part of a series in the Monitor, Carroll, who was hired full-time while she was captive, recalled the end of her ordeal on March 30.

When her chief captor, Abu Nour, said he was going to release her, Carroll said she didn’t get her hopes up.

“I’d heard all this a million times,” she wrote.

Then her captors said she would have to make a video recapping her experience, using just the information Abu Nour gave her. She could not say anything about the size of the group she was held by, or that there were women and children involved. And she had to tell the camera that her captives treated her very well.

Carroll was taken from the house where she was held and rushed into a car, without the money for her computer or her gift.

“I figured that if they didn’t give me those things,” she wrote, “then the end might truly be at hand.”

In the car, Abu Rasha said loudly, “Jill, we asked the Americans for the women prisoners and there were none.”

Carroll responded, simply, “Oh.”

“And then we asked the government for money, and they gave us none,” he went on.

“Oh yes, I know,” Carroll replied.

It was then that he threatened again to kill her.

Carroll said she forced a laugh.

“No, Abu Rasha, you’re my brother, you wouldn’t do that,” she told him.

He laughed and said they would drop her off at the Iraqi Islamic Party’s headquarters.

In the end, her captors did give her $400 for her computer, $400 for her trouble, and a gold necklace with a pendent.

Carroll said her body was free, but her mind was not, and her release is one of the hardest memories of her captivity because she found herself suddenly with no structure.

She said she tried to get back to her hotel from the party headquarters without the aid of American troops because she feared her captors were still watching her. But the now-vice president of Iraq, Tariq al-Hashemi, sent his personal security detail and Carroll was whisked away in a flurry of flashing lights and bulletproof SUVs.

She said a soldier, sitting behind her in an armored car told her, “We’ve been looking for you for a long time.”



On the Net: http://www.csmonitor.com


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